Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Arbor Teas
Tea Description
This organic, Fair Trade Certified tea offers a delicious synergy between excellent North Indian tea and rich, creamy vanilla. Organic vanilla beans were added in the Fall of 2008 to make this blend even more decadent than before! Excellent with milk, this tea is great for dessert. We recommend adding a bit of sugar or honey to satisfy a sweet tooth. This Vanilla Black Tea, as with all of our flavored blends, uses only the highest quality teas, essential oils and botanical ingredients, insuring an excellent cup every time!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Even though I don’t usually get too excited over a vanilla tea, I do consider vanilla to be among my favorite tea flavorings. There’s just something so irresistible about a good cup of vanilla tea – so rich, smooth and creamy!
And this is a good vanilla tea! The black tea base is strong but not what I’d call aggressive. It is earthy and pleasant tasting, and there is a hint of bitterness toward mid-sip. This is not that “oh no, I oversteeped the tea” kind of bitterness, but instead, it is a savory note that offers a contrast to the sweetness from the organic vanilla bean.
And while this IS a rich and creamy vanilla tea, it isn’t quite as creamy as some other vanilla teas that I’ve tried. Don’t get me wrong, I love a smooth and creamy, decadent tasting vanilla tea, but sometimes, its nice to find one that is a bit more focused on the black tea than the vanilla, like this one is. I think that this would be the ideal vanilla tea for those who typically find vanilla teas to be too cloying, because this one isn’t too sweet or creamy or anything verging near “cloying” at all.
Barely a hint of astringency, I don’t know if that’s the work of the vanilla there, smoothing out the astringency of the tea … but I just know that I hardly notice astringency as I sip. Aftertaste is softly sweet.
A lovely cuppa.
